Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 38 - Rhythmic Structure in Cross-Modal Infant-Directed Communication

  • from Section 6 - Rhythm in Language Acquisition
  • Edited by Lars Meyer, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Antje Strauss, University of Konstanz
  • Book:
    Rhythms of Speech and Language
    Published online:
    23 April 2026
    Print publication:
    07 May 2026, pp 687-706
    • Chapter
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation

  • Summary

    Infant-directed communication has been proposed to facilitate early language development, not only by providing infants with ample native language input but also by tailoring this input to infants’ individual developmental needs. In particular, extensive research has investigated prosodic and phonetic adaptations in caregivers’ infant-directed speech proposed to support early language acquisition, but more recently, research focus has shifted to the rhythmical properties of this register. This chapter reviews this recent evidence, and argues that rhythmic optimization is not limited to infants’ early speech input. Instead, it is present across the auditory, visual, and tactile domains of caregiver–infant communication. We will argue that infants enjoy access to optimized intersensory rhythmic input, which scaffolds their ability to segment the continuous speech signal into meaningful linguistic units, even when these units occur with weak regularity in naturally produced adult-directed speech.